Pastor's Message for February 2017

These are difficult times in America. Many of us are dismayed at what feels like the beginning of a fascist chapter in our history. Day after day I find myself restlessly picking up and putting down my phone, checking on the news, sighing, fretting.

My younger son watched me for a few minutes the other day and said, “Mom, why don’t you go to Cathance in your mind for a few minutes” – part of our old bed time routine for anxious or over-tired children. He was right. I was both anxious and over-tired.

Cathance Lake is a place where five generations of Bodmans have been going every summer for years and years. It’s an ancient place -- far older than our family’s love of it. Before Europeans ever came to this continent the Passamaquoddy people were fishing there. Year after year the ice goes out in April, the loons return to nest and the salmon come home to spawn. Year after year the beavers build their lodges in the coves and the outlet stream and the eagles circle high overhead. Year after year the stillness of the water at sunrise gives way to the whitecaps and winds of the early afternoon.

It is one of my deep, rooty places and all I need to do is close my eyes and breathe in and I am once again blessed by it and reconnected to the deep, ancient place in my soul where I can hear the Spirit.

I am sure that you too have those places that help to ground and center you and reconnect you to the pulse of God’s love for the universe, for this world, for that place,for you.

And I hope that KMUCC is one of your deep, rooty places. Not just the building with its rich store of memory and the echo of years of prayer-filled, grace-filled living, but even more importantly, the circle of loving people waiting here to pray, seek, learn, grieve and rejoice together.

KMUCC is gift indeed, and it is one I hope we will work on sharing with an anxious, seeking world in the months ahead.